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Talk:Race's Mating Season
I think this article probably needs a new title reflecting that it's the Race's mating season or cycle. TR (talk) 22:00, September 13, 2013 (UTC) :"Race's Mating Season"? "Mating Season (Race)"? Turtle Fan (talk) 02:09, September 15, 2013 (UTC) :I prefer the first suggestion by TF. ML4E (talk) 18:17, September 15, 2013 (UTC) Pon farr? Can the Race mating season be a reference to pon farr? Or is this connection too generic? It could be a common device in alien life form stories, though I can't think of any examples at the moment.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 17:40, May 23, 2017 (UTC) :It also tracks with a large chunk of the animal kingdom on Earth. HT was probably using terrestrial lizards as a model. TR (talk) 18:26, May 23, 2017 (UTC) :The other thing to remember is that the Race's mating season was exactly that, a season that happened at the same time each local year. The females would give off pheromones which brought on an indiscriminate mating urge on the males. Pon farr has an internal biological clock that goes off every seven(?) years regardless of the presence of members of the opposite sex and I believe it has to be with a particular member too. ML4E (talk) 20:20, May 23, 2017 (UTC) ::If memory serves, pon farr affects a male Vulcan every seventh year. Each male has his own unique cycle, so some small percentage of the population is experiencing it at any given time on a rotating basis. As ML4E says, it happens irrespective of the presence or absence of external sexual stimuli. :::On further review it turns out that females are affected as well, on a similar cycle. Given how seldom pon farr occurs for a given individual, two people who happen to be sexually receptive at the same time marrying one another (we know Vulcans are monogamous) is much less likely than drawing an inside straight. Then again, it always was a pretty dumb bit of exobiology, from its needless deadliness on a short time frame to the fact that a reproductive urge which can be satisfied by activities that have nothing to do with reproduction is evolutionary suicide. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:35, May 24, 2017 (UTC) ::::Star Trek III made it pretty clear that both parties didn't need to be in "season" to mate. Saavik mated with Spock as he was aging. There was nothing to suggest the she was acting on her own biological urge, or Spock's pheromones, or whatever, only that she was able and willing to do so. DC Fontana confirmed this--mating can happen anytime. TR (talk) 17:14, May 24, 2017 (UTC) :::::You know, that's the one movie I haven't gotten around to rewatching since rediscovering Trek in my adulthood; and considering how shitty the majority of Trek movies are, that's saying something, isn't it? I saw it when I was eight or nine, obviously all the hanky panky went right over my head. In the absence of first hand experience I would suggest that Saavik may have reluctantly psyched herself into allowing Spock to do that because desperate times call for desperate measures. His prospective mate in "Amok Time," under far more ordinary circumstances, seemed to have no interest in sex with him. Tuvok on the other hand seemed quite sure that his wife would have given him release had she been present when he went through pon farr in the Delta Quadrant. Maybe most Vulcans try to find spouses who are on the same schedule as themselves? Turtle Fan (talk) 22:36, May 24, 2017 (UTC) ::::::T'pring made it clear that she didn't want to be "the consort of a legend," but she did want Ston. Hence her little plots. I checked out on Voyager way before we got to Tuvok's issues. TR (talk) 02:05, May 25, 2017 (UTC) :::::::Tuvok didn't have much of an issue. He was going to try to meditate his way out of it, but Tom convinced him to whip up a holographic version of his wife instead (one of Trek's few open admissions of what all of us know, that the holodeck would be used almost exclusively for porn if it existed). It was the C plot of an episode that aired halfway through the final season. Vorik's issues were a good deal more memorable, though even then the main reason I remember that episode is the discovery of a Borg drone's remains at the very end of it, the first hint of the Borg on Voyager. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:17, May 25, 2017 (UTC) ::The Race's season, on the other hand, is just that, seasonal. Females begin emitting pheromones, but if I remember correctly, they don't actually become stimulated until they see a male's mating display. (I could be wrong there, but I'm pretty sure that was always the case.) Males never become stimulated in the absence of female pheromones, even if that absence lasts for decades. When the pheromones are present, everyone reacts at the same time in the same way, except for the elderly and those with hormonal imbalances. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:30, May 24, 2017 (UTC)